By Zack Quaintance — Saying I’m sitting here reading comics as the world burns is a fun phrase to type, but it’s maybe not the whole truth. I’ve actually been really busy as the world burns! Mostly covering the state and local government reaction to this crisis (because for a day job, I work as a reporter in the state and local government space). While I know this distancing has given plenty of folks more free time as usual, that just isn’t the case for me. I’m beset by more anxiety than usual while being busier than ever.

But that’s where the comics come in! Few things in my life relax me like sitting down with 22-page comic. I’ve written this before (many times) but the combination of meticulous artwork and text just makes chemicals fire in my brain like no other storytelling medium. I love the form, the history, the possibilities — all of it.

All of this is a way to say that one of my favorite panels this week came in Basketful of Heads #6, the penultimate chapter of Joe Hill and Leomacs fantastic campy slasher comic. I aboslutely love this book (so much so that I also wrote about this week for the DC Round-Up at The Beat), and more on why in a minute. First? The panel.

I love this panel, because to me, it encapsulates everything that’s made this comic so enjoyable. I’m not generally one for graphic violence, but that all has to do with how real it looks. Something like this is so heavily steeped in campy, 1970s teen slasher movie aesthetics, that it doesn’t bother me at all. I actually like the over-the-top nature of it. In other words, it just works.

Finally, as I’ve written elsewhere, the reason I like this book so much is that it does something I think is somewhat limited to comics — it embraces absurdity full-bore, naming itself Basketful of Heads before delivering said literal basketful of heads. Hard to ask for much more than that.

Basketful of Heads #6
Writer: Joe Hill
Artist: Leomacs
Colorist: Dave Stewart
Letterer: Deron Bennett
Publisher: DC Comics - Black Label - Hill House
Price: $3.99
Solicit: In the darkest and most desperate hours of the night, June Branch will use her impossible occult hatchet to cut her way back to her boyfriend. But time is running out for Liam, and June's basket is getting heavier with every new swing of the axe! It's all going down in the penultimate chapter of the gonzo gorefest that launched Hill House Comics!

Click here for past installments of One Hot Panel.

Zack Quaintance is a tech reporter by day and freelance writer by night/weekend. He Tweets compulsively about storytelling and comics as Comics Bookcase.